Jersey Support Youth

JSY is a local charity that has been set up in Jersey to provide support for vulnerable and at risk young people in the Island.

A new local charity called Jersey Support Youth Charitable Trust has been set up to help the Jersey Youth Service to provide more opportunities for vulnerable and at risk young people in the island.

While the outside world will think Jersey is a rich place to live and work, it does have the same issues as any other locations and young people facing the same life issues.

All money raised by the new charity will be used locally to directly fund additional face to face work with young people with current priority projects being work with young carers and “LGBTQ Youth Jersey” as there is currently very limited support for these young people.

The Charity will be providing the necessary funds to develop service to vulnerable and at risk children and young people through the work of the Youth Service and there are other areas that we wish to look at such as developing young carers further, support to young people involved with drugs or alcohol issues, support to Transgender young people, young people involved with Child Sexual Exploitation, lacking in confidence and self-esteem, homeless, battling mental health problems, may have become caught up in the criminal justice system or lost hope for the future after a long stretch of unemployment. Funds could be used for either staffing or to purchase resources to develop new areas of support to young people.

We want to make a difference and give the young people of Jersey the very best start in life and when life gets that bit difficult be there to provide the appropriate support when needed and not be on a waiting list!The value of the youth work approach is that it is all based on positive voluntary relationships with youth work staff, which means young people, want to engage which maximizes the impact of work undertaken.

The chair of the new charity is entrepreneur Johnathon Ruff who owns the Tamba Park attractions. He said: “Jersey already has an excellent Youth Service and the charity and I want to support them further to develop even more services for our young people.

“We have already started working with the Youth Service team and have some projects in mind and some fund-raising ideas planned for 2017. All the money we raise will be exclusively for local young people in the Island and that’s what makes this such an important and worthwhile charity.

”Principal Youth Officer Mark Capern said: “This is a very exciting time for the service and being able to secure additional funds, means we can develop new and different support services to young people and be able to respond rapidly to the needs of individuals and groups of young people and provide the correct level of support they need to stop them either becoming victims, putting themselves further at risk or seeing a decay in the emotional health and well-being. It is great to be working with Jonathan and his team who bring a fresh, dynamic and business approach delivering resources and services for young people.”